DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Description) This proposal is to request funds for registration fees, travel and housing expenses for 16 young investigators from the USA to attend the 16th International Papillomavirus Conference, to be held in Siena, Italy, September 5-12, 1997. Young investigators are defined for the purpose of this award as Ph.D. or M.D. student and postdoctoral fellows in training who are presenters of abstracts selected for either poster or oral presentations. In exceptional cases, Assistant Professors (or equivalent) at the beginning of their independent career will also be considered. Individual awards will be of US $1,550, based on a registration fee of about US $400 and an average cost for airfare from the US to Italy of about US $1,000. Any remaining funds will partially defray housing costs. The International Papilloma virus Conference is the most important opportunity every year for interactions among investigators in various areas of the papillomavirus field. These conferences traditionally bring together clinical investigators, epidemiologists, immunologists, as well as molecular and cellular biologists working on papillomaviruses. For this reason these meetings are particularly suitable for training young scientists, who gain exposure to a diverse array of topics related to their own field of studies. The results of papillomavirus research are not only of interest to virologists and academicians, but are also extremely relevant to our understanding of the mechanisms of cancer development and progression, as well as to general public health issues of disease prevention, screening, and management. Therefore this annual conference, the most comprehensive international meeting in this field, is of utmost importance for progress not only in basic papillomavirus research, but also in cancer and public health research.